A schoolboy injured in Donetsk school shelling

WASHINGTON, November 7. /TASS/. The United States condemns the shelling of a school that led to the death of children in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk, US State Department speaker Jen Psaki said at a briefing.

The statement comes as a reaction to the death of two school children in a shelling attack on eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Wednesday.

The teenagers were killed while playing on a school sports field in Donetsk. Three other locals, reportedly aged between 17 and 21, sustained various injuries and were hospitalized.

Russia’s Investigation Committee opened a criminal case to look into the deadly school shelling. According to investigators, on Wednesday afternoon servicemen of Ukraine’s Armed Forces and National Guard launched artillery shelling upon instructions of their commanders directly targeting school number 63 in Donetsk.

Investigators suspect that the attack was launched to “eliminate a Russian-speaking ethnic group living on the territory of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic,” the committee's spokesman, Vladimir Markin, said.

The shelling comes in violation of international conventions, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as well as the protocol on ceasefire in eastern Ukraine and the memorandum signed in the Belarusian capital Minsk in September.

Amnesty International said earlier the school shelling must be “immediately, fully and impartially investigated.